50 Years of nascar racing ~ The Talladega Curse (Post 2)

By Matt McLaughlin

Post 2

Editor's note: This article is part of a special reprise of Matt
McLaughlin's "50 Years of NASCAR Racing", written and publishedin 1998 in
commemoration of NASCAR's 50th Anniversary celebration that year. Matt has
kindly granted me permission to run the entire series. Please, sit back and
enjoy as you take a journey back through the pages of history and perhaps
relive a memory or two. Many thanks to Matt for his
generosity in sharing. God bless you, my friend.

The truthfulness of the legend of the Talladega Curse is
lost to time and memory, but certainly there have been enough odd and tragic
incidents at the track to give even a sober man pause. As the story is told,
there were a bunch of folks none too happy about Big
Bill France's decision to build his race track on the property he had bought.
Among them were local hunters who said it was the best fox hunting area in the
world. But the legend goes on to say that a local Native American tribe
considered the acreage the track would be built on sacred ground and the tribe
sent their medicine man to ask France not to build there. France refused to
relocate and as the story is told, the medicine man invoked a curse on the new speedway.
And no doubt was fined $5000 by NASCAR for cursing, just like Todd and Rusty.

There was of course, the infamous Professional Driver's
Association boycott of the first race at Talladega, which pretty much stunk up
the show for the fans, but in relative terms that's far from the worst incident
that took place at the track.

In the May 1973 Winston 500, NASCAR decided the track was so
big it could easily accommodate a 60 car starting field. Soon after the race
started the field was trimmed to a more manageable 39 cars, unfortunately by a
massive 21-car wreck on the tenth lap that veteran driver Buddy Baker still
describes as the worst he has ever seen. Eight cars rolled over, and there were
body parts and even engines and transmissions scattered down the backstretch.
Veteran campaigner, and African American pioneer driver Wendell Scott, got the
worst of it with serious pelvic injuries destined to end his career.

In the August Talladega 500 of that same year, rookie driver
Larry Brooks was killed in a 13th lap crash. Smith's Mercury got loose and
contacted the wall with the right side sheet metal. Those at the track were
stunned to hear he had died, as the car was not badly damaged, and in fact, the
crew was repairing the car preparing to get it back out on the track when the
news broke. As is the custom, the drivers still racing were
not told until after the event Smith had died. But on the 90th lap, 1970 Grand
National champion Bobby Isaac says he heard a voice in his head telling him he
was to retire from racing immediately or he would die in a crash. Isaac radioed
into the pits he quit, got out of the car and never raced in NASCAR's top
division again. Isaac did in fact die of a heart attack in a race car shortly
after completing a Sportsman race.

In the Spring race of 1975 tragedy
once again struck inexplicably. Richard Petty, who had led a good portion of
the race, came storming into the pits on the 141st lap with a wheel bearing
that was so overheated the grease was ablaze. His brother-in-law and crew member
Randy Owens went over the wall with a pressurized water tank to extinguish the
blaze, and when he opened the valve the canister exploded sending him thirty
feet into the air. He was dead on arrival at the infield care center.

At the Fall race in 1975, NASCAR
legend Tiny Lund was trying to launch a comeback after several years off the
circuit. On the sixth lap he lost control and was hit in the driver side
numbers by rookie Terry Link and killed instantly. Link was knocked unconscious
by the impact and his car was set ablaze. Rescue workers were slow in arriving
and two infield fans climbed over the fence and dragged Link from his burning
car, sparing the sport a double tragedy that day.

On May 6th 1979, Buddy Baker was in the lead draft of a long
line of cars, and had just made a pass for the lead when a tire blew out and
triggered a 17-car wreck that eliminated virtually every one of the lead lap
cars. Cale Yarborough's Oldsmobile actually cartwheeled over Benny Parsons'
Cutlass. Shaken, Yarborough scrambled out of his car, only to be hit by a
spinning Dave Marcis and pinned between the two cars.
Fortunately and somewhat miraculously, his injuries were not too serious.

A 71st lap crash at the May 1983 Winston 500 involved 11
cars and sent Phil Parsons, Benny's brother and current Busch series star
tumbling end over end in his Pontiac. Once again help was slow in arriving and
two trackside photographers managed to drag Parsons clear of the wreck just
before the car exploded in flames.

By May 1987 it was clear that the drivers were tempting
fate. Every car that made the field on time qualified at over 200 miles per
hour, and Bill Elliot set a qualifying record that still stands today at
212.809 miles per hour. Bobby Allison blew a tire and the force of the blow out
lifted his car up into the air and sent it hard into the catch fencing that
separated the grandstands from the track. The rear of the car actually went
through the fence and debris injured several spectators, but if the car had
made it all the way through the fence and into the crowd, it is too terrifying
to consider what 4000 pounds of stock car traveling at 200 miles per hour would
have done to the tightly packed fans in the stands. NASCAR quickly
re-instituted restrictor plate rules to slow down the cars out of concern for
the fans' safety. Ironically, Bobby's son Davey went on to win that day.

A two lap shoot out at Talladega after a brief rain delay
must be a driver's worst nightmare and Rusty Wallace's was realized at the May
1993 event. NASCAR threw the green flag with two laps to go and there was
mayhem all over the track as drivers beat and banged on one another like it was
a Saturday night hobby stock race… at around 190 miles per hour. Coming towards
the finish line, Dale Earnhardt tried to get underneath Rusty and contact was
made. Wallace's Miller Pontiac was sent into a sickening series of flips, and
he wound up with a broken wrist, a concussion, facial cuts and broken teeth.
The car tumbled across the finish line and he was credited with a sixth place
finish, though he was about twenty feet in the air when he took the flag. The
injuries severely hampered Rusty's championship hopes, though he had been
leading in the points when that race started. He wound up finishing second in
the Cup chase to Dale Earnhardt of all people.

On July 12th, 1993, NASCAR lost one of its brightest stars
at Talladega, though not in a race. Davey Allison had flown to the track in his
new turbojet helicopter to watch family friends Neil and Dave Bonnet practicing
at the track for an upcoming event. The helicopter was within feet of the
ground when for reasons unknown, it suddenly shot straight back up, rolled over
on its side and crashed to the ground. Early in the morning of July 13th Davey
Allison was pronounced dead of massive head injuries.

Two weeks later, with hearts still heavy, the Winston Cup
teams arrived at the Talladega track to run the second
race since 1975 without a member of the Allison family on the track. And once
again Talladega showed no pity. A grinding 70th lap crash sent Jimmy Horton's
car up and over the first turn fence and tumbling almost three stories to a
dirt road that lined the parking lot. Horton was bruised and shaken but not
seriously hurt. As he put it, "You know you're in trouble when the first
person to get to you after a wreck is carrying a beer." Stanley Smith was
involved in the same wreck and hit the wall a ton head on. He has still not
recovered from the head injuries he suffered that day. On the 131st lap Neil
Bonnet, making his comeback after three years spent recovering from injuries in
a previous wreck, made contact with Ted Musgrave and his car also went sailing.
Like Bobby Allison in 1987 he slammed into and almost through the catch fencing
into the stands. While Bonnet was not seriously hurt, the race was red flagged
for over an hour while the fence was repaired. It was that pair of wrecks that
led Jack Roush to develop, and NASCAR to mandate the roof flaps on today's
stock cars, intended to help keep them from going airborne.

Legends of the Talladega Curse sound like the sort of
humorous nonsense that young boys exchange around a campfire late in the
evening, but given the series of tragedies at Talladega, you can bet there
won't be any drivers laughing when they strap into their cars this coming
Sunday for the race.

At present, Matt is
not taking email correspondence at Race Fans Forever. If you have comments,
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